I agree that labels correctly applied can lead the way to understanding
However, labels applied to normal human idiosyncrasies, then is can unfairly define you

Reading your SCOJ, I totally validate one statement : you are a good person.

Funny your reference to red wine : back in the day people mostly drank white wine at functions …. My dad gave me great advice ‘drink red wine “ ,”why?” I asked , he replied “because you get more of it.

What is the story with your left shoulder ? …… what I am learning as I age is that manypeople live in constant pain .

Hi Anita

I’m sorry to hear that your tics are still cause you distress. I wonder what your experience is like with them? Interestingly, mine went away with pregnancy and came back afterwards. Makes me wonder about the impact of blood flow (there is more blood in your body whilst pregnant). I tend to think of mine as tense muscles trying to relax and struggling to do so. I didn’t have them when I was younger. I developed them in my 20s with my health issues. I do also get it when I’m very stressed too. I try to drink lots of water and eat bananas. Pushing my body too much makes it worse too and so does worrying about them.

I’d be quite happy to meet online or talk on the phone. ❤️ There are some applications that can be used to do so. Zoom or Microsoft Teams are used for online meetings. WhatsApp is good for talking to people in other countries on the phone. I don’t know if you have used any of these or if you could ask someone to help set any of them up? It’s easy enough for me to post a meeting link here for Zoom or Microsoft Teams. I would use email to exchange telephone numbers though.

I have blue eyes, pale skin and brown hair. In summer, I get freckles on my nose. I’m pretty short and not skinny at the moment.

I think people like our parents and some others too, distance themselves emotionally from the pain they cause. By blaming others, it creates a sense of distance. By pretending it’s not their fault, they hide from the pain. Deep down they know the truth. Most of the time they choose to actively live in denial, choosing a fantasy over reality. The pain of the hurt they cause tends to break through at certain times though. They become very depressed and self-hating during these periods. My mother would try to commit suicide, or ask doctors for help during these times.

The largest outcome for parents with severe trauma is suicide. Another outcome is child abuse. Many have their children taken away nowadays. Very few manage to succeed in raising children. There were not the resources available to help your mother in the way that I have gotten help. Nor the resources for my mother, who was fobbed off by doctors when she asked for help. It took her a long time to actually get it and by the time she did I was gone.

I don’t think I would have been as lucky if I had no help. The world is slowly but surely changing. Your mother was a product of her time and culture. If things were different, perhaps things would have been different. Perhaps she wouldn’t have just given up fighting her chronic mental illness? It is a shame that you didn’t have that chance to find out. In a different life, she could have been different and you could have been different. You might not be here helping people.

Dear Anita,

this is my second attempt at replying 🙂

So you’ve asked me on the other thread to read your conversation with Copilot on the relationship between narcissism and toxic shame. I have, and I think Copilot did a very good job 🙂

I like how it says that even though we might have compassion for the narcissist – since their behavior may have been caused by a trauma – we also shouldn’t minimize our own pain and the negative impact it had on us:

Two Truths Can Exist Together: She might’ve been wounded, overwhelmed, defending herself unconsciously. She also said something that was cruel, harmful, and untrue.

Copilot also says what I’ve heard from experts on youtube that narcissists live in their own distorted reality and never fully acknowledge the harm they are doing to others:

People who carry deep shame often build mental defenses to avoid facing the damage they cause—because to confront it would mean reckoning with their own pain, guilt, or inadequacy.
So she might’ve sensed it… but shoved that knowing into the background. Made excuses. Told herself stories like “I’m just trying to help” or “She’s too sensitive.” Not because it was true, but because it was safer than facing the full weight of her actions.

Even if they know their actions might not be the nicest, they always find an excuse. If nothing, they will say “he/she is a bad person – they’ve deserved it.” In their own mind, they are vindicated, because they were “harmed” and the other person is “bad.” Very black-and-white and even childish thinking.

Regarding your conversation on love, Copilot says that what the narcissist claims is love isn’t love really, and I agree with it:

Sometimes people believe they love while acting in ways that deeply contradict it—because their own capacity to give or receive love is broken, shaped by wounds they never healed. What you received wasn’t love in its truest form.
Anita: “What you received wasn’t love in its truest form.”- Was it love in any form?
Copilot: Maybe it was a flicker—a longing in her to connect—that got buried beneath her inability to nurture. Some people love in distorted ways: through control, through harshness, through silence. But love that’s warped ceases to be recognizable. It’s like trying to water a plant with poison and calling it care.

In the second part of the above section, Copilot says: “Some people love in distorted ways: through control, through harshness, through silence.”

I personally would rephrase it as: “Some people relate to others in distorted ways. Some people parent in distorted ways.” But this parenting or relating to others cannot be called love. In my book, love manifested as abuse isn’t love, even if the abuser calls it love.

Copilot says the same, actually:

if her love didn’t feel like love… it’s okay to name that. Love should be nourishing. It should protect, affirm, and build. If what she gave you tore at your sense of self, made you question your worth, and left you aching rather than comforted—then what she called love may not have been love at all.

Here is something that I don’t necessarily agree with, at least not the way it is phrased:

And here’s the deeper truth: You weren’t just “any child.” You were you—sensitive, perceptive, deserving of tenderness. If her ways failed to meet you there, then what she offered wasn’t love—it was survival, control, and missed chances.

Well, any child would be hurt by your mother’s actions. Every child is sensitive. Every child is deserving of tenderness. So it’s not that you were especially needy, and therefore you didn’t feel her love the way it should be felt. It’s rather that you were a normal child, with normal needs, and she didn’t know how to meet those needs.

However, I do agree with Copilot’s conclusion (and its overall message):

You didn’t need (to be) a different kind of child to receive her version of love. She needed to become a different kind of mother.

Yes, definitely! And I hope you can accept that about yourself: that her inability to love you and give you what you needed doesn’t have anything to do with you, but with her own deficiencies.

But it also means that even though you might have compassion for your mother – since her own childhood was a traumatic one – you don’t need to carry a hope that you could heal her or make her aware of her own wounds to the point that she would want healing.

Unfortunately, narcissistic people are very resistant to the idea that there’s anything wrong with them, that they have any kind of vulnerability or weakness. So I think that any attempt to talk to her and “help her see” would be a futile one. The only way forward is to let go of the need to change them and make them into the loving parent we needed as children.

Dear Anita,

you’re very welcome!

When I first read Copilot’s use of the word love in that context, I felt a deep sense of discomfort. It puzzled me—calling abuse any form of love feels like a distortion in itself. As you so beautifully put it, that kind of language blurs boundaries that must stay clear. Your phrasing—relating or parenting in distorted ways—rings true to my experience. It preserves the integrity of what love is meant to be: safe, nourishing, affirming. Anything less shouldn’t bear the same name.

Yes, I think so too. Actually, I think Copilot (or any other AI model, such as ChatGPT) can be rather tricky, because sometimes it gives us the answers it thinks we want to hear. I’ve noticed it with ChatGPT that if I formulate my question in a way that it contains in itself an assumption, it might give me an answer that is skewed to conform to that assumption.

It’s almost as if my assumption (which might be a false one) limits the spectrum of answers that ChatGPT is willing to offer me, and skews the answer to fit my assumption! Which I found rather unsettling, because I want the facts, not some “hallucinations”, as they call it, or some skewed opinions that AI thinks I want to hear.

I might be wrong about Copilot, since I’ve never used it, but if it’s similar to ChatGPT, maybe it “sensed” that the thought of your mother not loving you is a painful one for you:

Anita: She didn’t love me, did she? (tears in my eyes)

Maybe that’s when Copilot chose to describe her behavior as “love, but not in its truest form”. And then, when you probed further: “was it love in any form?“, it proceeded to offer the possibility that it might have been a flicker of love and a longing to connect, but that she wasn’t able to show it properly. Finally, it concluded that “some people love in distorted ways: through control, through harshness, through silence.”

I don’t know, this is just a speculation. But it could be that it gave you an answer that it deemed more acceptable to you. Eventually, it did “correct” itself and gave a true definition of love. But this little “glitch” might have been caused by this feature of wanting to give a pleasing answer.

Sorry for harping on this, but I did get disappointed in AI, or at least, I’ve experienced its limitations, so I’m now much more cautious about using it.

When my mother did things that seemed loving—like cooking my favorite meal, or walking a long distance to get me a cake I loved—it confused me. In some ways, I almost wished her behavior had been consistently bad, so I wouldn’t have to feel so conflicted.

Do you think those acts were expressions of love, at least in intent?

Hmm… I think she wanted to look like a good mother. And for her, a good mother is a mother who sacrifices herself, who almost acts like a martyr. Walking long distance to get you a favorite cake is a martyr-like behavior. And I can imagine that she was later telling you how sacrificial she was, and how this is a proof that she loves you so much, right?

I don’t think she did it in a calculated, conscious way, but that she had the need to feel like a good person, and doing those “acts of sacrifice” made her feel like that. It was for her own ego, I think, for her own sense of goodness. I might be wrong though.

And yes, that’s very confusing, because those “acts of kindness” do seem like love and care. But they always come with a price, where she might blame you later for not being grateful enough, or as a proof of how much she loves you.

But the thing with narcissistic mothers is that it’s very hard to be grateful and feel their love, because most of the times what we hear is criticism, put-downs, and the message that we’re not good enough. We might even feel guilty for not feeling grateful for their “acts of kindness” when in truth, we can’t be grateful for the abuse that we’re experiencing on a daily basis.

Anyway, I think their “acts of kindness” or “acts of sacrifice” might be more about showing how great of a person they are, and not so much about truly caring and wanting to make their child happy. So yeah, I think there is a selfish motive underneath, although they might not be aware of that.